Abstract
As a solid basis for social work advocacy, the book, The Criminalization of Black Children: Race, Gender, and Delinquency in Chicago’s Juvenile Justice System, 1899-1945 offers a well-organized collection of historical accounts of how the juvenile justice system of Chicago created a racialized set of structures and procedures for the engagement and treatment of Black children during the domestic migration of Black families, people whose life chances had previously been contorted by the racism and oppression in southern American states. Many migrant Black families weathered the ups and downs of northern efforts at social and racial integration. In characterizing these changes, Agyepong calls attention to the upending of Black childhood innocence, whereby Black children would ultimately become the systemic pivot of embedding structural racism within a larger justice system. Relevant implications of adversarial, public treatment of Black children are illustrated with clarity and specificity. A detailed expose of evolving policies, activism, and contentions related to the social and systemic structures that disregarded the developmental needs and safety of Black children during the early 20th century is of special interest to contemporary social work advocates.
An ethical principle featured in the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics is the primacy for social workers of tackling social problems—such as decolonizing child welfare shaped by White supremacists. The Criminalization of Black Children offers a poignant yet pertinent awareness of child discrimination throughout American history, which may be important for dismantling public systems that disregard the well-being of Black children today.
Agyepong considers individual accounts of discriminatory actions imposed upon Black girls and Black boys, which led to systemic decisions that ultimately defined the well-being of children committed to public systems. As a strength of this book, such detailed accounts provide insight into how broad social ideologies were not only enacted into policies but were also reinforced as professional and social givens about Black children in general. This book offers concise attention to the lack of innocence prescribed to Black children by White child welfare workers and officials. Agyepong also details how systems of care were primarily designed to protect and serve the well-being of non-Black children, since Black children were largely perceived as irreparable. This book is so well-written that it generates readers’ confidence in the legitimacy of the archival data used for analysis and presents a thoughtful case for close attention to be paid to current inequities experienced by Black children involved in public systems designed for protection or rehabilitation.
Framed through a womanist lens for advocacy for Black children’s rights and well-being, the book highlights two concepts of note. First, amid the struggle for value and fair treatment of Black children, the voices of Black women leaders during the early 19th century heralded public advocacy by demanding change in how public institutions treated Black children. Activism through the Black women’s club movement in America, for example, has historically created a campaign of womanist leadership and community advocacy on behalf of justice for migrant Black children. Second, a focus on the intersectional nature of White society’s historical expectations of Black girls with the consequent racist, sexist, and class-bound patterns of institutional treatment of Black girls within public institutions offers insight for current day objectification of Black girls’ sexuality. As a key point, Agyepong points out how ideals that stem from American slavery about Black female sexuality, or ill-perceived ideals of a lack thereof, directly correlated with systemic disenfranchisement in the forms of inequitable treatment and access to resources received by Black girls. Efforts to expose the unique disenfranchisement experienced by Black girls who were committed to public institutions were often trailblazed by Black women leaders.
The Criminalization of Black Children highlights the development of the first juvenile court in the United States within one of the epicenters of domestic migration and social integration, the City of Chicago. It illuminates the initial disparities within Chicago’s juvenile justice system provided to Black children and that of non-Black children in rehabilitative and protective practices. The Criminalization of Black Children additionally articulates the force of these racist precedents for successive generations of children and adolescents. Because of the book’s clear thesis concerning and evidence documenting the evolution of a juvenile justice system rooted from its very onset in White supremacy, this book successfully achieves one of its goals. The author also accomplishes a second aim, that of making timely recommendations that would lead to effective community advocacy for the rehabilitation and protection of Black children, efforts that would help maximize the chances for their leading healthy, meaningful, and satisfying lives.
